2 Getting Started

Oracle Visual Builder is a cloud-based software development Platform as a Service (PaaS) and a hosted environment for your application development infrastructure. It provides an open-source standards-based solution to develop, collaborate on, and deploy applications within Oracle Cloud. To use Visual Builder you should be familiar with the tools available for building your applications.

Note:

It’s important that you determine if your instances are Visual Builder or Visual Builder Generation 2, so you know which guide to read for set-up instructions. (Visual Builder Generation 2 refers to Visual Builder running natively on Oracle Cloud Generation 2 infrastructure.) Let’s do a quick test: Open the OCI console, then open Developer Services. Scan the list for Visual Builder. If you see it, that means you’re running on Gen 2 and you should refer to Get Started with Oracle Visual Builder Generation 2 in Administering Oracle Visual Builder Generation 2 to create and configure Visual Builder instances instead of this guide. If you don't see it, then this guide is the one you need.

To perform Oracle Visual Builder Gen 1 tasks such as adding user accounts and starting and stopping an instance, you need to have the correct Oracle Cloud service administrator role.

If you are a Visual Builder administrator, you still might not have sufficient privileges to perform the tasks described in this section, but you should be familiar with the steps and tools for administering Oracle Cloud services and users.

Create a Visual Builder Instance

Visual Builder Generation 2 is now available in all regions, so you can no longer provision Visual Builder Gen 1 instances.

To provision a new Oracle Visual Builder instance, see Create and Set Up Your Visual Builder Generation 2 Instance in Administering Oracle Visual Builder Generation 2.

If you are an administrator of a Visual Builder Gen 1 instance:

• You can still manage your existing Visual Builder Gen 1 instances. For more about managing an instance, see Add Users and Assign Roles and Administrative Tasks in this guide.
• Your existing Visual Builder Gen 1 instances will be migrated to Visual Builder Gen 2. For more about migrating your instances, see Migrate Your Instance to Generation 2 in this guide.

Confirm You Have the Required Roles

If you are the user that initially signed up and purchased universal credits for Oracle Cloud, you automatically have the necessary service entitlement roles to manage Oracle Visual Builder instances. Otherwise, the correct roles must be explicitly assigned to your user account to manage Oracle Visual Builder instances.

To manage Oracle Visual Builder instances, ensure that your user account is assigned the required roles and to the required groups.

You must be assigned this role:	To ...
Cloud Account Administrator	Set up Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) compartments and buckets. If you're not an account administrator, contact the administrator to add you to the OCI_Administrators IDCS group.
Identity Domain Administrator or User Administrator	Add users and assign IDCS roles and groups. If you're not an administrator, make sure that your OCI group is assigned a policy like this: Allow group MyGroup to inspect identity-providers in tenancy
AUTONOMOUS_VISUALBUILDER_ENTITLEMENT_ADMINISTRATOR (Oracle Visual Builder entitlement administrator role in IDCS)	Manage the Visual Builder instance. If you're not the account administrator or the IDCS administrator, contact the IDCS admin to assign this IDCS role to you. If you're not assigned this role you won't see the user interface to provision a Visual Builder instance.

Assign the entitlement administrator role to a user

If you are not sure you have the correct administrator role, or if you want to assign the correct role to a user, log in to Oracle Identity Cloud Services to manage the service's roles. To do this, you'll need to have the Identity Domain Administrator or User Administrator role assigned to you.

To assign the AUTONOMOUS_VISUALBUILDER_ENTITLEMENT_ADMINISTRATOR role to a user.

1. Log in to Oracle Identity Cloud Services.
2. Click Oracle Cloud Services in the main navigation.
3. Click VISUALBUILDERAUTO in the list of services.
4. Open the Application Roles tab.

   To see a list of users that have already been assigned the role, click Users Assigned.

5. To assign the role to a user, choose Assign Users in the menu on the right.
   
   
   Description of the illustration idcs-service-manage-roles.png
   
   
6. Select the users you want to assign the role to. Click OK.

Access an Oracle Visual Builder Instance

Here are the steps for accessing an Oracle Visual Builder service instance:

To access a service instance in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console, you must have an Oracle Cloud account. If you don't have an account, you can sign up for a free credit promotion or purchase a subscription. For details about the options, see Sign Up for the Free Oracle Cloud Promotion and Buy an Oracle Cloud Subscription in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation.

After you sign up for an account you will receive an email message with details about your Oracle Cloud account and how to access your services. After signing up, it typically takes approximately 30 minutes before your services are available in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console.

1. In a web browser, go to https://cloud.oracle.com to sign in to Oracle Cloud.

   If you received a welcome email, use it to identify the URL, your user name, and your temporary password. After signing in, you will be prompted to change your password.

   To view the list of supported browsers, see https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/GSG/Tasks/signingin.htm#supported_browsers.

2. In Cloud Account Name, enter your Oracle Cloud account or tenancy name and click Next.
3. On the Single Sign-On (SSO) panel, if required, select your identity provider and click Continue.
4. Enter your Oracle Cloud account credentials and click Sign In.

   Note:

   When signing in, make sure you're using your Oracle Identity Cloud Service (IDCS) account credentials. Your user name will be similar to oracleidentitycloudservice/[e-mail].
5. In the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console, also called the OCI console, click the navigation menu in the top left corner.
6. Open the navigation menu and click OCI Classic Services, then click Visual Builder in the list of services under Platform Services.

   If you don't see OCI Classic Services in the navigation menu, confirm that you've been assigned the required role. You can ask your domain administrator to check the role assigned to you in IDCS.

   Note:

   If you log in through the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console using a URL similar to https://console.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com/, the navigation menu has changed. You previously selected Platform Services > Visual Builder to access your Oracle Visual Builder instances.

7. When you access the Oracle Visual Builder console the first time, you see the Welcome page. Click Instances.
8. In the Instances page, you can see a table of your Oracle Visual Builder Gen 1 instances. Click an instance name to open its Visual Builder Instance Details page.

To create accounts for your users and assign them appropriate privileges and roles, see Add Users and Assign Roles.

Start or Stop an Oracle Visual Builder Instance

You can start or stop an Oracle Visual Builder instance in the Infrastructure Console. Billing is stopped for the duration that the instance is stopped.

To start or stop an Oracle Visual Builder instance:

1. Sign in to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console.

   Note:

   When signing in, make sure you're using your IDCS account credentials.
2. From the Infrastructure Console, click the navigation menu in the top left corner, expand OCI Classic Services, and then click Visual Builder to open the Instances page.

3. Identify the instance to start or stop.

   To start an instance:

   1. From the menu to the right of the instance name, select Start.

   2. Click Yes when prompted to confirm your selection.

   To stop an instance:

   1. From the menu to the right of the instance name, select Stop.

      
      
      
      Description of the illustration admin-stop-start-instance.png
      
      

   2. Click Yes when prompted to confirm your selection.